Relationships With Money

Friday, June 15th 2012

Here’s what I think: People mostly have one of three relationships with money.

A majority of the population think of money in a very simplistic way – more money = more things I can own. The majority think this way because well, they don’t have much money and have never had much money and probably won’t ever have much money. Not having money isn’t a bad thing, it’s just how 95% of the people around you think about money. They obsess about it (even if they think they don’t) but they don’t know how to get more of it. They convert one irreplaceable resource (their time), in to a fungible, easily replaceable resource (money).

The second relationship to money is realizing there is always more money to be had. These people can make money work for them by making more money with the money they already have.

The third relationship to money is not the money itself. The relationship is with what money can do. Money is a lever. And you can attach this lever to almost anything and move whatever the lever is attached to with varying amounts of ease. The longer the lever (more money) the easier it is to make stuff happen. That lever can move almost anything that is within the realm of physical possibility.

None of the relationships are actually mutually exclusive.

There are other relationships with money too, but for the most part, those three are the foundations that people have with money.